By Breedlove
Editor’s note – This article originally appeared on AstrosConnection.com on August 8, 2001.

An excellent email came in about the Elarton discussion last time out that raised a question already slated for discussion:

Your piece on the demise of Elarton is interesting. Given the inherent unpredictability of most pitchers, it is always risky to give up on one such as Elarton who has shown great promise. Nevertheless, he has clearly stunk for the better part of a year now, so the trade for the pennant race rental of a workhorse such as Astacio is probably not unreasonable.

One thing that I have not seen in the local media is an analysis of Dierker’s policy of allowing pitchers to throw excessive numbers of pitches. Although I have not analyzed it fully, my sense is that this may have had a prejudicial impact on Elarton. After coming off shoulder surgery, Dierker allowed Elarton to throw a substantial number of high pitch games. Over the past several years, the Sabermatricians at Baseball Prospectus (this season’s edition has a good article on the subject) have been monitoring the impact of high pitch counts on pitchers, and the developing statistics are indicating that Dierker’s policy is damaging toward young pitching prospects such as Elarton. I am interested in your thoughts.

I enjoy your analysis of baseball and the Astros Connection site. Keep up the good work. – TK

Thanks for the great feedback, TK. This timely query opens the worm-can nicely. There are two layers of issues involved here. First, is there a meaningful relationship of high pitch counts to injury and short- and long-term effectiveness?

Some brave and excellent thinkers have taken stabs at that question, with little concrete success. The people at Baseball Prospectus have put forth some convincing work, but even that is still in the spin cycle of a critical washing machine right now. For example, Sean Forman notes that according to the Prospectus findings TK mentions, after a 140 to 149 pitch outing – the most extreme pitch count category studied, reached only about 16 times a season and with the greatest negative post-start effect – there is only a 5.5% performance letdown. That translates into less than a single run over the next 21 days.

Instead of getting caught in that head-spinning mathematical quagmire, focus here is on the second layer. Assuming there is a meaningful relationship of high pitch counts to injury and performance, how should it be addressed, and should it be addressed at all?

Should it be addressed at all!? Yes, that is a serious question. Were it clearly true that high pitch counts lead to injury and performance problems, would that mean they should automatically be dispensed with? It may be the best way to cull pitchers out who really don’t belong. It is too much to say pitch counts coddle them, but it’s fair to say that pitchers who want fame, glory and riches would prefer not to have them in their way. At the very least they can alter the approach to the game, maybe for the worse. For example, Tim Redding knew he was not going to get to throw a ton of pitches. If he wanted to work deep he had to make the hitters put the ball in play, a strategy that runs counter to his punch-out arsenal. Pitch counts may skew baseball’s mindset to one that values efficiency over ability.

Unfortunately, knowing there is a correlation of high pitch counts to performance and injury, if there is, still wouldn’t say much about why the correlation exists. Is it because pitchers are not supposed to throw that many pitches? Or is it that with tighter pitch counts, pitchers’ bodies aren’t prepared to throw a lot of pitches? Or is it even that only true big league starters can throw that many pitches and the rest are wannabes? In other words, while the correlation is interesting, it does not tell us whether it is a problem, what the problem is exactly, or what should be done to correct it.

If it’s true, should pitchers throw less to prevent injury, or more so the body will be primed to stave injury off? After all, one would think running full speed in the outfield could lead to more injuries than jogging, or maybe even weaker performances on the basepaths, but anything less is deemed unacceptable and a reason to boo. If you want a guy to avoid injury running, you have him run more, you don’t avoid it. Might the same logic apply here?

Arbitrary pitch count numbers are nearly meaningless. What is vital is whether a pitcher is laboring, his mechanics are free and easy, and his velocity is still there. If these things are failing the pitcher risks injury – which can happen after 120 pitches, 100 pitches or even 50. There are any number of stories of pitchers hurting themselves just tossing in the pen. Should we conclude that warming up is bad for pitchers? The trained eye of a baseball professional is better able to tell when a pitcher is crossing the threshold into bad form than a pitch count can ever be.

Every pitcher’s start will be different, maybe based on how well he loosened up before the game, maybe on whether he had starches in his breakfast. Anyone who partakes in regular physical exercise is aware that some days are just better than others. A universal pitch count could be helpful, but only in the manner an actuary’s tables are helpful. They tell you what works well overall, statistically, as a trend, but not in any single event. Erring on the side of caution according to pitch counts without fail could prevent a team from ever getting full value from a pitcher and a pitcher from ever realizing his potential.

Some guys won’t make it as starters. They don’t have the arms to work deep into games. Maybe baseball should be striving to weed those weak starters out of rotations, not lowering the standards of starting pitching with pitch counts until everyone can do it without losing effectiveness or risking injury. What use is a starter if he can only ever get you through the fifth or sixth inning? Rosters are limited to 25 guys, pitching staffs to 11 or 12. Clubs must do their best to build a rotation of pitchers that achieve the best possible balance between innings-pitched and effectiveness.

If a pitcher consistently loses effectiveness following a high number of pitches, maybe he’s really a reliever. It’s very possible that some guys’ physicality isn’t conducive to being a major league starter. If getting hurt or losing effectiveness is happening because of how many pitches they’ve thrown, not because of failing mechanics or velocity, then they probably should just work from the pen. Everyone’s body isn’t cut out for that highly demanding repetitive exercise. Those whose is not will be weeded out, though managers will be blamed for pitching them too much and letting them hurt themselves. Remember also that injury is presumably the last, worst result of pitching too deep. Before that would come ineffectiveness, either immediately or in outings following the deep outing. That ineffectiveness will get a pitcher who doesn’t cut it out of the rotation in most cases.

It really gets blurry when you consider that pitching is always just plain harmful. It tears at the muscles involved and everyone is going down sometime, even guys like Randy Johnson, Roger Clemens, and Curt Schilling. They throw ridiculously hard for incredibly high pitch counts year after year after year, yet veteran nibblers like Jamie Moyer seem to get injured getting to triple-digit counts, topping 90 on the gun, or taking off their jackets. Greg Maddux has thrown more than 200 innings for 13 consecutive years. How famous would he be had he been operating under a strict pitch count all this time, and how much of his performance would his teams have lost?

Then there is the Astros’ specific situation. Larry Dierker’s eye for when to pull a starter is not his best asset, despite being a longtime pitcher who suffered some injuries himself. Burt Hooton seems to help a lot, as has getting a stronger pen. That allows Dierker to make the change based more on whether the starter is still throwing properly and effectively than whether the game is too close to take one of his few quality pitchers out early. With Elarton, Dierker seems to have abided by the popular methods prescribed in Craig Wright in The Diamond Appraised. He suggests the following for pitchers Elarton’s age when he was under Dierker:

“For age twenty-three to twenty-four, the restraints can be eased up, but their season average should stay under 110 pitches in most cases. The single-game ceiling can be jumped up to 140 as long as the pitcher is still strong.”

Elarton was 23 in 2000. He averaged 104.7 pitches an outing and never threw 140 pitches. He went over 130 three times – in one of those, a loss to Atlanta, he did not seem “strong,” – over 120 pitches twice and 119 or less the other 25 times he started. This season, Elarton is 24. He averaged 96.05 pitches an outing for the Astros and went over 120 pitches 3 times in 20 starts. His pitch count was probably ruled much more by his performance than strength.

As TK suggests, it’s possible that throwing too much before or after injury has been harmful to Elarton, a pitcher with a fine career ahead of him if he can work out the kinks. Unfortunately no one will be able to say with certainty whether that’s true. It seems just as likely that his mechanics are fouled up. Repeatedly throwing from a less natural arm slot can be harmful to velocity, the body, and ERA. Probably a combination of factors is at work with Elarton.

The Outlaw did not say anything negative about working deep into games, and probably much preferred it. This is the guy who was willing to say getting up and throwing hard in the pen just about every day in ‘99 is what he believes hurt him that season, which had nothing to do with pitch counts and everything to do with not giving the muscles involved time to recuperate from the injuries pitching causes. Point is, Elarton might be one of the few pitchers who would say something.

Larry Dierker’s feel for pulling starters is as good as it’s ever been, but there probably is still room to improve. Burt Hooton gets a lot of respect from the staff and may be better at getting honest answers from pitchers than Vern Ruhle, an excellent mechanics guru, ever was, and he can be the difference. He is old-school – a mindset typically ridiculed by the same people who argue strongly for strict pitch counts – but not in the same way as Dierker. He has little tolerance for pitchers being ineffective, which means changes get made out there more quickly. His motive may not be to protect their arms when he yanks them so much as to make a point or win a game, but that may be the spin-off benefit the pitch count folks are looking for.

Speakeasy

Ouch. A word from local seer Waldo:

“On an anal-retentive note, the quotation ‘My God, it’s full of stars!’ was never actually spoken in 2001, but was referred to in the sequel, 2010. Also, Bowman encountered a monolith, not an obelisk. Again, pardon me for getting nitpicky, but I couldn’t help myself.”

You are right, Waldo. My sources agree that the quote is from 2010. Mea culpa for the addled memory. For those scoring at home: since Waldo was first to note the error, chalk one up for him, even though that monolith sure looked a lot like an obelisk. Look it up.

Last time out there were two gems. Elarton’s was, “I got no place else to go.” TZ’s resident fire-god Xiuhtecutli swooped in quickly with the correct answer. It is from An Officer and a Gentleman, the excellent study of a man becoming that unfortunately propelled Louis Gossett Jr. into a nightmarish death-spiral of typecasting in military B-movies. For Astacio there was, “Que pasa there, Pedro?” First to identify it as clubhouse banter from Major League, breathed across the lips of the immortal Tom Berenger, was CapnTime. He spends much of his TZ time complaining that he was going to make breakfast cereal but all the good names were taken. On top of everything was the Czar of Slam, Todd the Bod; TradeMaster, your guide in the realm of Pitchers and Payrolls was the first to correctly source both quotes. Nice job, freaks, and thanks for playing to all participants.

Good luck identifying this one. Your vague hint is Fatboy Slim. If you need a rules reset, check last issue via the link at top.

“That boy ain’t got the life expectancy of a housefly.”